Subject: Re: Thoughts on Franz Inc., ACL pricing, etc.
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1997/03/30
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3068680062283116@naggum.no>
* Cyber Surfer
| Your experience may be different, but I'm willing to bet that you'r enot
| a typical Windows developer.
that should be an exceptionally easy bet. I've told you several times
already that I don't develop for or in The World According to Gates. I'm
deploying a Lisp solution on an NT box, but it's nowhere near being a
Windows application. it will talk to a Delphi application via sockets,
which will handle the user interface and the Windows specific operations.
the Lisp could even run on a uninfested computer.
| Are you suggesting that Windows programmers use Emacs to develop and
| deliver their apps?
why, yes, of course! but I think you missed the point. what you develop
in and what you deliver need not be the same. I use Lisp to write a lot of
C code for me from a reasonable input language of my own creation. then I
run GCC (under Emacs) to build the binaries. for all intents and purposes,
the source is in a domain-specific language. for all intents and purposes,
I did deliver a C application. these do not conflict. you think they do.
I don't want to write in C, anymore, so I don't. it's as simple as that.
| You may not like it, Erik, but you'll find a lot of people agreeing with
| me.
so what? you could find a lot of people agreeing there's a comet behind
Hale-Bopp and that it's a good idea to commit mass suicide to be picked up.
whoever agrees with you are not important. those who manage to use Lisp
fruitfully even on Windows platforms _are_ important, because they further
the cause, they improve the products, they build applications that others
will hear about. you, on the other hand, keep giving people who don't want
to use Lisp the best arguments in the world, and yet you have nothing to
show for your "bad news" other than your own unwillingness even to _try_.
| I'd love to deny it, just as you do, but most of us can either be
| pragmatic, or unemployed.
get a grip, OK? I'm not denying anything! you have been saying this for
months, yet it remains as untrue as it was the first time you said it.
all I'm telling you is that your "bad news" does not reflect the whole
truth, and that you are consistently bad-mouthing a vendor and a product
that works exceedingly well for a (relevant) lot of people. I get the
impression that _you_ deny these people the right to exist because they
don't match your notion of "most of us" or "the majority".
you are no pragmatist, Martin. if you were, you would find ways to use
Lisp. you don't. you consistently and extremely annoyingly keep ranting
about how you can't use Lisp. you're a negative dogmatist, Martin.
| Did you miss the hostile C++ programmers who used to hassle this
| newsgroup? If so, then that may help explain your faith in Lisp's
| ability to convince people who neither know nor care about Lisp.
I thought it should be obvious by now, and I do get the feeling I'm
repeating myself, but I DO NOT CARE about anybody who "neither know nor
care about Lisp". can't you at least understand _that_?
however, I _do_ care about those who know and care about Lisp, even those
who have problems for which I think Lisp would come to their aid, but I'm
in no hurry to see more of them just for the sheer sake of numbers and I
don't think marketing campaigns to convert people to either a programming
language or a religious faith are morally defensible.
| I'm fortunate enough to work for someone who trusts my judgement, and who
| isn't a complete C++ fanatic.
really? so the judgment that is trusted is that you should not use Lisp?
| IMHO, denying this doesn't help Lisp.
can you get a grip on yourself and stop lying about what other people say?
dammit! I thought I would get rid of the annoyance by scoring you well
below zero, but I can't even leave your articles alone because you're lying
about me in them.
NOBODY IS DENYING ANYTHING OF YOUR FACTS, YOU DIMWIT!
but the fact also remains that it is well below half the truth, and that
you _never_ seem to grasp that there is more to this than your incessant
whining about this feature and that feature that you don't get.
you're like some of the student groups on some campuses -- you only keep
demanding and there's no point in giving you anything you ask for since it
is obvious that you will keep demanding regardless of what you get, indeed
that meeting your demands will only prove to you that your whining "works".
| Good luck, Erik. I envy you. You've either convinced your boss, or your
| clients, or you're your own boss, in which case you have no right to tell
| me how to do _my_ job, nor anyone else in a similar position.
amazing. yes, I'm my own boss, but being one's own boss does not exactly
_lighten_ the requirement to give people what they would like to pay for.
yes, I convince my clients of several things to get a project. (1) that I
can do it. (2) that I can do it within their budget. (3) that I can do it
in a reasonable time. (4) that I can do it better than anybody else for
the same price. (5) that I am an expert at everything I do for pay. (6)
that I need the right tools to get the job done. (7) that they need to
have installed a computer on which I can deploy the result. some or all of
these arguments may involve Lisp. or none.
why should my clients care which programming language I use? if they want
somebody to write in C++ or for the Windows API, they don't have a problem
I would want to solve. if they want something that can be used from C++ or
with the Windows API, that's OK, because no matter how shitty they are, I
can find a way to interface with them, if need be by hiring a programmer
who knows them well, as I have done in the past. I have written so much
glue code in my life that interfacing X to Y is ipso facto possible for all
values of X and Y as long as bits can traverse an interface or a hundred.
believing otherwise, which seems to be your particular angle on life, is
proof positive of gross incompetence.
| Like a large number of programmers, I get paid to write _Windows_
| software. Not Lisp software.
nobody has ever hired me to write Lisp software. people hire me to solve
problems that others think are impossible or that they don't know how to
solve. most of the time, I don't, either, but I usually find a way. most
of the time in the past, that entailed a _lot_ of manual labor. these
days, it still entails manual labor, but I learn more in the process, I
enjoy it more, and I solve much more challenging problems. this difference
is directly attributable to the programming languages used.
| If you can do this in Lisp, that's wonderful, but either you're not
| writing the same kind of code, or you get to make the choice of tools
| yourself. Most of us do not.
I care what "the rest of us" do. I do not care what some unknown majority
does. I am frankly amazed that you care so much about what those you
cannot possibly affect to, and so little about those you can.
| If you prefer to ignore bad news, then just forget all of the above.
don't be such an insufferable idiot! your news is not only bad, it is
stale. it has been reported (mostly by you) literally hundreds of times.
I'm not ignoring or denying the _facts_ you report (such as they are), I'm
denying the _importance_ you to give them, and I'm _this_ close to ignoring
anything _you_ say because you have not brought any fresh information or
data to this forum for a _very_ long time.
perhaps the best part of your "contributions" is how easy you make it for
others to point to "some jackass C++ Windows fool like that Cyber Surfer",
laugh, and go back to making real software, again.
(that other shit piece of his arrived while I was composing this message,
but this is too good to waste.)
#\Erik
--
I'm no longer young enough to know everything.